Student Selected to Lead Google Developer Student Club

January 28, 2020

BATON ROUGE, LA – Despite being more than 7,000 miles from home and only a sophomore,
LSU Computer Science major Rohan Kadkol has found his niche and is already making
an impact in his short time in Baton Rouge.

Near the end of his freshman year, Kadkol was selected by Google to lead the Google
Developer Student Club on campus. The club, which Google initially installed at hundreds
of universities across Asia, is in its first year both at LSU and a number of other
universities in North America. According to Google, the club aims to help students,
“grow their knowledge in a peer-to-peer learning environment and build solutions for
local businesses and their community.”

Google DSC is almost entirely self-taught and self-funded, with Google only providing
some PowerPoints and access to online training courses for new members.

“We find what the pain point is in the community, what people are fed up with, and
what needs to be solved. Then, we try to build the tech solution using the knowledge
we have and try to solve that problem,” Kadkol said.

In each fall semester workshop, of which there were three per week, Kadkol and his
team developed an idea for an app. They worked on smaller scale apps during Monday
and Wednesday workshops, with a more professional app on Fridays.

However, the club has organized a new schedule for this spring 2020 semester. Google
DSC will now meet at least five times per week, focusing on android development twice
a week for 1.5 hours each workshop, programming twice a week for one hour each workshop,
and a Google Cloud Study Jam for 1.5 hours every Friday.

Additionally, Kadkol said they will try to focus only on topics that aren’t taught
in the classroom at LSU to give members a wider skillset.

Born in India but raised in Kuwait, Kadkol is a perfect fit to lead the Google DSC
at LSU because of his expertise in, and passion for, software development. Kadkol
spent his Fridays in the fall strictly writing code for the apps they created, a talent
instilled in him from a very young age in Kuwait.

“My programming interest actually started with my father,” Kadkol said. “When I was
in second or third grade, he taught me programming and helped me build a calculator.
That’s when I knew I really loved it. I had to make buttons for it and had to write
the code, which was so amazing and cool to me at the time.”

Also during his youth years, Kadkol developed a ticketing system in which people could
theoretically enter their flight information before seeing a, “your ticket is booked,”
message with a confirmation number.

Since Kadkol applied and was accepted to lead the club at LSU last year, his focus
for this semester and beyond is to expand and enhance upon the foundation of what
has already been established with the club. He said there are currently 10-15 students
who attend workshops regularly. He wants that number to near 100 by the end of this
semester.

“I’m really focusing on promoting this because this is something that can be very
important for CS students to have experience with once they graduate,” Kadkol said.

As an enhancement of what’s already in place with Google DSC, Kadkol foresees tech
companies and employers making their way to workshops in the spring 2020 semester
and beyond.

“We’re going to have big industry people in the tech field come and give speeches,”
Kadkol said. “In the beginning of workshops, we’d like to have guest speakers and
have time to interact with them after, which is important. You need to get motivated
by talking to these people in the industry to see what’s going on.”

He also envisions partnering with small businesses in East Baton Rouge Parish to discover
their specific pain points to alleviate struggles.

“For small businesses, they’re already running short on money and resources, so we
can come in and help them for free and that’s another way we want to help the community,”
Kadkol said.

The sophomore is hoping his passion in mobile application development will encourage
other like-minded students to join the Google DSC at LSU.

“The LSU Computer Science program offers very good classes, but this (Android development)
is something else that you can do once you start working,” Kadkol said. “Computer
science majors may have never considered doing something like this before, but this
is absolutely something you should do if you’re a computer science major. I just want
to promote this kind of skill that isn’t necessarily taught in the classroom.”